Brooklyn Museum

Our first themed walk has us checking out two of New York's "other" Botanic Gardens during Cherry Blossom season. Cutting through Bed-Stuy and Prospect Heights brings us to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens early in the day. We don't rest on our laurels for long, heading up to Queens via MIddle Village and Rego Park to check out the Queens Botanic Garden. This walk is also an opportunity to get our first proper looks at Flushing Meadows and Forrest Parks, with paths that hug Meadow Lake and Willow Lake. We've left a mile off the drawn route to account for daily wandering in the gardens.

Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted literally shaped the landscape of New York, with an influence that touches millions of lives every day. On this walk we take a day to visit experience nearly all of their local contributions, starting at Morningside Park and hanging a right to take in Riverside. Cutting through the lower half of Central Park, we take the Manhattan Bridge over to Fort Greene Park and head for a ramble through Prospect Park. We come out the other side to take a long stroll down the Olmstead designed Ocean Parkway, then up the Prospect Park again before concluding the day on another Olmstead route, Eastern Parkway. Excluded in this walk due to distance is the previously visited Forest Park in Queens.